Challenging Hybrid Regimes' Uncertainty: Transnational Networks of Journalists and Academics in Turkey and Europe

The study of opposition strategies vis-à-vis autocratisation has only recently started to gain traction, and the role of journalists and academics in resisting autocratisation has been mostly neglected, despite these groups' potential for creating an impact in the public sphere through their work and their role in shaping diagonal accountability, which is fundamental for establishing the conditions in which the political opposition can challenge the autocratic incumbents in elections. Against this background, this paper investigates the strategies of transnational and domestic networks of journalists and academics who have allied with other actors to oppose the autocratisation of the political regime in Turkey, which is defined in various democracy indexes as an ‘electoral autocracy’ or a ‘hybrid regime’. To identify and study these strategies, the research looks into a few networks that have operated between Turkey and Europe from 2015 to 2021 and it adopts a qualitative approach using process tracing, document analysis and in-depth interviews with over thirty relevant actors (journalists, academics, lawyers, NGO representatives etc.). The timeframe of the study has been selected for its faster progression of autocratisation, the highly polarized atmosphere and the drastic anti-democratic measures put in place by the country’s regime. In the Turkish context, the journalists and academics selected for this study were among the groups who suffered the consequences of autocratisation more severely. The incumbents attempted to frame them as ‘outsiders’ hostile to ‘the people’, and this framing often coincided with a restriction of their freedom of expression and the loss of their jobs. The paper suggests that the strong impact of these elements has put the opposition groups in a position of obligatory reaction to autocratisation, leading many to (re)invent and (re)think the spaces and forms of their actions. For the most part, the networks studied in this paper have achieved these changes not through a direct confrontation with the incumbents, but by challenging the uncertainty informing Turkey’s hybrid regime and presenting it with their own understanding of how democracy should be. To do so, they have turned to the embeddedness of Turkey in the European legal and socio-political contexts (including through litigation, the establishment and deepening of solidarity networks and lobbying European political groups and institutions). This base of support has produced mixed results. Nevertheless, it helped them to affirm their right to free expression and create opportunities that allowed them to work again and strengthen diagonal accountability pressures. This, in turn, forced the regime to step out of the dynamic of polarization and engage with the instances put forward by these groups. While Turkey’s regime type remains unchanged, the paper argues that these selected opposition actors and their networks, have temporarily contributed to slow down Turkey’s autocratic progression by challenging the uncertainty and ambiguity featured by hybrid regimes.